The Boundaries of Leadership in the Age of AI | Responsibility, Relationships and Emotions 2/4

Author/Editor Maria Anna Furman

The second episode of the debate “Leaders of Tomorrow: The Power of the Brand, the Power of the Human versus AI” begins with a tension increasingly felt by people leading companies, projects, and teams. On the one hand, there is fascination with how much tools can accelerate work; on the other, concern that this acceleration may become a trap. In this part of the conversation, the viewer quickly discovers that AI is only a gateway. The true centre is the human being, their boundaries, relationships, responsibility and emotions.

The meeting moves into the second panel smoothly, as if naturally continuing a thought introduced earlier: artificial intelligence can generate, suggest, and streamline, but it does not relieve a leader of the need to verify, to feel, and to make decisions. It is at this point that the conversation clearly takes on a more personal tone. The panel stops resembling an industry discussion and begins to sound like a space in which professional and life experiences can finally resonate without a mask.

The format of this round supports such a shift. Participants do not deliver monologues; they confront one another through questions. One leader asks another, and the audience observes how seemingly simple topics give rise to stories that form a real map of contemporary leadership. Crises become the central thread personal, health-related, family and business crises. Not as sensation, but as proof that a leader’s path is rarely a straight line and that the cost of success is often invisible to those looking from the outside.

Most powerfully, the perspective of boundary experiences comes through those who re-evaluate everything. In these stories, there is a moment when a person stops playing a role and is left alone with a decision: what next, how to live, what truly matters. The viewer is presented with an image of a leader who does not build authority through force or image, but through the ability to stand in truth and to name their own path, including its most difficult parts.

At the same time, the panel reveals another face of modernity: a world in which tools can produce “evidence” and a document may look perfect even if it is false. The conversation therefore turns to trust, and this is not technological trust measured by the effectiveness of algorithms, but human trust, built on relationship, attentiveness and intuition. A strong message is voiced: in the age of automation, paradoxically, the importance of the most analogue things grows, conversation, responsibility and decisions made not only on the basis of data, but also on human judgement.

The second part of the episode touches on yet another area often overlooked in debates about AI: the mental hygiene of leaders and people who work with others. Participants show how easily work “comes home” and stays in the mind, how tension accumulates in the body, and how emotions try to take control when regulation is lacking. Instead of theorising, concrete attitudes appear: conscious boundary-setting, building balance after intense projects, returning to silence, nature, rest and breathwork. In the background, one thought constantly resonates: in a world that is accelerating, the ability to stop becomes a strategic competence.

Another segment of the panel introduces a topic that immediately shifts the conversation's temperature: family versus AI. Here, technology ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a mirror reflecting a lifestyle. The question arises whether AI genuinely frees up time for loved ones or rather raises expectations and makes a person “always available”. The answers are not black-and-white. Ambivalence is visible: tools can help manage work better, but at the same time, they tempt people to take on more, faster and harder. And it is precisely here that the debate reveals its most important meaning: it is not about what technology can do, but about whether a leader can say “enough”.

The topic of the price of success also emerges – the most painful one, because it is recorded in the memory of children and loved ones. Not in numbers, not in results and not in awards, but in absence. The panel does not judge or moralise. Rather, it allows the mechanism to be seen: first comes the “building-up” phase, then the construction of position, and only at the end does reflection appear that not everything can be made up for. And that technology, however useful, will not replace everyday presence.

When the conversation turns to emotions, the programme touches on another taboo: whether a leader has the right to weakness. One can see how standards of work and social expectations are changing, but also how long many people functioned within a model in which a leader was supposed to be unshakable, cool and always ready, even at the cost of health. The second episode shows that this is shifting: there is growing space for humanity, for a worse day, for truth. At the same time, there is still a clear tension that a leader often carries responsibility in solitude, because not everything can be said, not everything can be revealed, and sometimes the obstacle is simply one’s own ego and need for control.

An important element of this part of the programme is the audience's voice. Viewers’ questions do not move towards technological forecasts. They are about life: about what to tell young people entering adulthood, how to build wise relationships, and what role a parent should play, not as a controller, but as a present “rock” one can return to after a fall. This completes the picture of the episode: the future is not solely a matter of tools, but of the quality of bonds.

In its second episode, “Leaders of Tomorrow” does something rare. Instead of selling a narrative about AI's unlimited possibilities, it shows that the real questions lie elsewhere. Where does the boundary between development and dependency run? Who takes responsibility for decisions? Is success worth the price paid by relationships? And in a world of automation, might the most valuable advantage of a leader turn out not to be technological superiority, but the ability to be present with others and with oneself?

The second episode of the Wyspa TV debate thus becomes a story about contemporary leadership in the age of AI: leadership that does not consist in being “indestructible”, but in leading despite fear, despite pressure, and despite the temptation to hand everything over to algorithms. Because at the end of the day, regardless of how perfect the tools become, it is the human being who remains with the consequences. And it is the human being who creates meaning.

Author/Editor Maria Anna Furman